


Redemption Arc

by emrisemrisemris



Category: Mass Effect Trilogy
Genre: Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, Established Relationship, I swear it was meant to be straight-up porn but then angst happened, M/M, during me2, everyone is human AU, superhero names for everybody
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-01
Updated: 2018-03-01
Packaged: 2019-03-25 08:11:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13830072
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/emrisemrisemris/pseuds/emrisemrisemris
Summary: "Renegade," Kim said. "Turned up out of nowhere half a year ago. Cyborg, supersoldier - all the stuff Cerberus are good at - sniper, infiltrator."The man in the picture wore off-white armour with the Cerberus hexagon on the shoulders. Red light glinted behind his visor."And maybe John Shepard," said Kaidan."The physical resemblance is uncanny, except for the glowing scars," Kim said, and pulled up a close-up. "But that's all we've got. No voiceprint, no biometrics. We could be looking at anywhere on the THIC grid. Which is where you come in."





	Redemption Arc

**Author's Note:**

> For the March 2018 edition of #shenkosmutthursday, hosted on Tumblr [@spectrekaidanalenko.](https://spectrekaidanalenko.tumblr.com/)

"Take me through that list of names again."

Agent Kim coughed, and reset her presentation.

"SubZero. Real name Jacqueline North. Biotic. She's got a string of convictions this long; Renegade busted her out of supermax about three months ago."

Click.

"Grunt. Real name unknown. Heavy combat. Most likely came out of an unsanctioned lab using samples from the old Soviet TUCHANKA programme."

Click.

"Zaeed Massani. Baseline so far as we know; just very good at his job. Used to be part of the old Blue Sun outfit before turning freelance."

Click.

"Shockwave. Real name Jacob Taylor. Another biotic - he used to be one of ours before signing up with Cerberus."

Click.

"Galatea. Real name Miranda Lawson. Lab-boosted biotic; we don't know where the genemods came from. She's been a Cerberus agent for years. Almost certainly Renegade's handler, if he has one."

Click.

Kaidan folded his arms.

"Archangel," Kim said crisply. "Cyborg, sniper, vigilante, assassin. Real name officially unknown, but we're certain it's Garik Vakarian."

"But we can't make that ID official without rock-solid evidence, unless we want the UN to come down on us like a ton of bricks," Kaidan said.

"Colonel Vakarian's position in the Peacekeepers makes that more difficult, yes," Kim said.

Click.

"Ultraviolet, real name Taaliah Al-Rayyan. Tech expert and drone rigger - you know that, of course. Her father's on the board of Qaria Robotics. Doesn't seem to mind his daughter moonlighting for Cerberus, though."

Click.

"Renegade," Kim said. "Turned up out of nowhere half a year ago. Cyborg, supersoldier - all the stuff Cerberus are good at - sniper, infiltrator."

The man in the picture wore off-white armour with the Cerberus hexagon on the shoulders. Red light glinted behind his visor.

"And maybe John Shepard," said Kaidan.

"The physical resemblance is uncanny, except for the glowing scars," Kim said, and pulled up a close-up. "But that's all we've got. No voiceprint, no biometrics. We could be looking at anywhere on the THIC grid. Which is where you come in."

THIC was the agents' mnemonic for dealing with heroes disappearing and re-emerging seemingly defected to the other side: Traitor, Hypnotised, Impostor or Clone. It happened often enough that it had acquired its own arsenal of management-speak, emergency protocols, action plans … The business of saving the world was drab and unexciting, except when it was awful.

Kaidan stared at the blurry closeup, and tried to match the half-seen bone structures to a face he hadn't seen in two years, since Spectre - as he'd been then, the legendary infiltrator, the biggest name on the Alliance roster - hadn't made it out of the burning plane; had instead fallen twelve thousand feet ending in an ice crevasse. They'd never found the body, though they crawled the ice with drones and depth scanners. Kaidan still woke up in the small hours hearing the fizzle of the radio link cutting out.

"If Tali and Garry are on his team that's a good argument for him being real," Kaidan said at last. "I can't see either of them working for Cerberus on their own time."

"THIC applies to them as well," Kim said. "Vakarian was off the map almost as long as Shepard. Al-Rayyan has spent a lot of time in war zones. We have to consider they've been turned or replaced as well."

"Which is where I come in," Kaidan echoed.

"All we need at this stage is an ID," said Kim. "Don't engage, don't try to bring him in. Just … try and get a good look and tell us if we've got John back, or not."

*

The call came at three o'clock in the morning one Tuesday in summer. Kaidan suited up on autopilot, headed down to the hangar in a blur, joined by an equally bleary strike team. It wasn't until they were onto the plane and heading out into the grey sky that the monitors flickered on.

"Something's going down in North Dakota, and we think it's Renegade," said Admiral Anderson, without preamble. "Alenko, you've been briefed; there's a copy of that briefing in your suit files if you need it and there'll be local data as fast as we can get it. I repeat, this is not a takedown, this is not an extraction, this is reconnaissance _only._ If it turns out to be something else, deal with it if you can, but if it starts getting hairy, get out."

The transmission cut.

"Horizon, North Dakota, population 323," Kaidan read off the flight plan. The accompanying picture showed a scattering of neat, plain houses around brown roads, amongst brown fields, under a vast sky. "What the hell? There's nothing there Cerberus could possibly want."

*

"Commander Shepard," said Kaidan quietly. "Otherwise known as Spectre, hero of Geneva. You're in the presence of a legend. And a ghost."

The words assembled themselves almost without his conscious input. He was too busy staring, at the familiar lines of Shepard's face, at the strange glowing scars, at the Cerberus insignia on his shoulders and the broken star on the chestplate where he'd used to wear Spectre's symbol.

The survivor was saying something; Garry stepped aside to try and talk to him, but he left.

"Sir?" whispered one of the strike team over his suit comm.

_Traitor-Hypnotised-Impostor-Clone -_

Kaidan crossed the distance between them in two strides, and pulled Shepard into his arms.

Shepard melted bonelessly into his grip with the same desperate eagerness he'd always had, the kind that even now, even fucking now, in the middle of a town that stank of terror, with the stench of ozone in the air from an alien rip in space, made Kaidan's breath catch in his throat and sped his heart.

Shepard's cheek was feverish-warm against his.

He could kiss Shepard right now, welcome him back, like they'd spent two years in some kind of shared bad dream; like he hadn't spent a sleepless fortnight hand-searching two hundred square kilometres of ice looking for Shepard's corpse. And then - and then -

And then probably one of his own team would tase him in the back, because there was fraternising with the other side and then there was _fraternising with the other side,_ and as far as they were concerned Spectre was dead as he had ever been, all evidence to the contrary a Cerberus false flag; and then there'd be a shoot-out, which they would lose, because this little town had good cover and Shepard and Garry used to bet pennies on who could write their initials on the range targets quickest; and then he'd be taken back to some Cerberus hideout to recover and Agent Kim would put him down on the list of the disappeared, with THIC? beside his name.

He pulled back, and for a moment Shepard's breath on his face almost made him do it anyway.

*

"It's him," Kaidan said when Admiral Anderson appeared on the screen.

"You're certain?"

"Sir, I've never been more certain of anything in my life."

*

Back in his apartment, Kaidan stripped off the sweat-soaked undersuit, showered, and only then went back to find the tiny scrap of paper that Shepard had pressed into his hand, and which he'd managed to transfer to one of his boots when he took off the armour in the locker room. It had a phone number on it.

He couldn't call; his calls were recorded, and Shepard's probably were too, and even if the phone was anonymous there wasn't an agent in the Alliance who didn't know Shepard's voice. (Them, and every ten-year-old in the country, although he dialled up the _I'm-a-space-marine_ act for the TV spots. Had done. Once.)

And what could they possibly have to say to one another?

Kaidan sat down on the edge of the bed, towel still wrapped round his waist, and tapped out a text.

_Nice to meet you the other day. I'd like to spend a bit more time together. When are you free?_

He was sprawled on the sofa catching up on TV when his phone buzzed.

 _I'm heading out of town Friday, but if you don't mind a hotel bar …?_ and a link: one of the hotels near the airport that served business travellers and tourists.

_Sure. 8.30?_

_It's a date._

*

The bar was busier than he'd expected, but he could've picked Shepard out of a stadium crowd.

They'd both gotten good at the kind of small disguises most of the people in their line of work used to go out in public without being recognised. Sentinel's public image was fresh-faced and clean-cut; tonight, Kaidan hadn't bothered to shave, _had_ taken the time to comb his hair out of the static-induced pyramid, and swapped out his contacts for heavy-framed glasses. Add a plaid shirt and the grubby Canucks backpack he'd lovingly patched since college, and he could almost see the tipsy business fliers filing him under either _local hipster_ or _lost tourist._

Shepard hadn't made much of an effort, to Kaidan's eye, but then the public had never seen Spectre's face as often, and in any case everyone thought he was dead. The Alliance switchboard and social media team had become very used to excitable reports of people "spotting" Spectre back from the dead - usually merely mistaken, occasionally hoaxes; it was one of the reasons it'd taken so long for the idea to gain traction that he might actually be alive.

Tonight he'd somehow covered up the facial scars, or stopped them glowing; bulky headphones obscured the distinctive line of his jaw. He had a leather jacket over what looked like a band t-shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots, and was absorbed in his phone.

Kaidan got himself a drink and one for Shepard, and took the other seat at the little table.

"Hey."

"Hey." Shepard pocketed the phone, and pushed the headphones down around his neck.

He'd always been fair; tonight he looked ashen.

Kaidan pushed one drink encouragingly towards him, and said "So, you been following the Olympics at all?"

Shepard took the glass, and said sceptically "You really want to talk about sports?"

"Not since Croatia knocked us out of the water polo," Kaidan said. "But this is a nice normal date, and we don't have any reason to be talking about - conspiracy theories, or alien invasions. How are you?"

A long moment passed.

"I've been out of hospital for six months and went straight back to work," Shepard said. "It's been pretty rough. I'm not convinced about the new management, but it's good to have the team back."

"I saw Garry, and I heard you were working with Tali again," Kaidan said tentatively. "You seen Liara?"

"Went freelance," Shepard said, and took a drink. "Rex went back to Alaska. I got Joker back, and Chakwas, and Adams."

Another pause.

Kaidan had a sip of his own drink, and then said "Took a while to get all the paperwork sorted out, but they did bury Ash at Arlington. I don't know if you heard."

"Good," said Shepard. "God knows she earned it."

Another pause, this one strained.

Kaidan reached for Shepard's hand; it was warmer than he'd expected, halfway to feverish. Shepard's fingers closed around his tightly, and for a moment they sat like that, the two half-finished glasses between them. Then Shepard let go and stood up abruptly, shoving his chair backwards, and said "I can't think in here. Come upstairs?"

*

As soon as the hotel room door clicked shut behind them, Shepard's arms were around Kaidan again, his face pressed into Kaidan's shoulder, holding him tight.

Kaidan stroked his hair, and held on.

Eventually Shepard lifted his head, and went to sit on the edge of the bed. Kaidan looked at his posture, all closed-in, and leant on the edge of the desk instead.

"I didn't think you would come," Shepard said eventually.

"I figured since you went to all that trouble to ask -" Kaidan dug the scrap of paper out of his pocket and held it up "- it had to be important."

Shepard cracked a smile and said "I thought people tried to give you their numbers all the time."

"People try to give Sentinel their numbers," Kaidan corrected. "Me, not so much."

"You haven't . . ?"

Kaidan shook his head. "I was a mess for months. And then I was way too busy."

"I've seen the TV spots," Shepard said. "Nice costume redesign, too."

"I'm … not so much a fan of yours," Kaidan said.

"You think I'd be working for Cerberus if I had an alternative?" Shepard said sharply. "You saw that - that thing over Horizon. It's not the first. There's half a dozen other little towns gone just in the US. Dozens abroad. I don't see the Alliance looking into it."

"They're going to be," Kaidan said grimly.

"Good luck with that."

"I'll take Alliance bureaucracy over Cerberus any day," Kaidan said. "I thought you did too. Come back."

"They've retired the name," Shepard said. "If Spectre comes back to the roster, it'll be someone else. Reboot the character. Fresh start."

"As Renegade, then," Kaidan said. "Everyone loves a redemption arc."

"Like they'd have me. It'd be PR suicide." Shepard rubbed his temples. "I think I'm still owed about three court-martials for what happened in Geneva. I'm fucking toxic, Kaidan. You should … I should go."

"It's your hotel room," Kaidan said, more lightly than he felt. "You gonna stick me with the bill?"

"Dammit, Kaidan," Shepard said, and for the first time a little of the tension went out of his shoulders. He looked around the room as if he hadn't seen it before, and half-chuckled. "Yeah, sorry. Guess it's bad manners to invite you up to my room and then break down on you."

"Wouldn't be the first time," Kaidan said, and sat down next to Shepard, offering his hand. After a moment's hesitation Shepard took it. "You want me to stay? I'll go if you want."

Seconds ticked past. Kaidan watched the numbers change on the bedside clock, Shepard's fingers warm in his.

"I want you to stay," Shepard said eventually. "I want … I want you. If you'll have me back."

Kaidan kissed him: leaned in just like that, without hesitation, and remembered all in one go what it had been like before, when they'd come back from mission and fall into bed together, armour dumped in a pile on the floor amongst all the abandoned press kits and fanmail. The press conferences spent cheerfully not answering personal questions; the social media team's polite but extremely firm request that they not check their own search results without safe-search turned on. Spectre and Sentinel, the dream team, co-stars, cover stars, Earth's greatest heroes.

Had it really been two years? Had it been only two years?

They abandoned shoes, socks, Shepard's jacket, Kaidan's glasses, jeans, before falling back on the bed with Kaidan's shirt half undone. Kaidan kissed Shepard again, and said "Safeword?"

Shepard grinned up at him, and licked his lips. "Whatcha planning, Kaidan?"

"I haven't seen you for two years," Kaidan said bluntly. "I don't know what you've been through but I know it was bad. I know what you like, but I don't know what's holding you together, and I don't wanna be the one to make it snap."

"Red, then," Shepard said, after the barest of hesitations, and kissed him again.

Kaidan ran his hand over Shepard's chest, enjoying the fit of the tight t-shirt and Shepard's half-gasp when his fingers trailed over a nipple, then hitched the t-shirt up to follow the track of his fingers with his mouth. Shepard moaned as Kaidan kissed his way around one nipple and then the other, and shuddered when Kaidan used his teeth.

"Too much?"

Shepard shook his head, and Kaidan recognised the start of him sinking towards that other state he sometimes did: wordless, adrift, but hot and needy and endlessly willing, wanting whatever Kaidan did to him.

Kaidan stripped off the last of his clothes and helped Shepard with his, and properly looked at him for the first time in two years.

Entire thinkpieces had been written about Spectre's extraordinary good looks, but the TV spots and the motivational posters didn't capture a tenth of it. He still had the shoulders that'd caught Kaidan's eye in the first place, the sharp collarbones that invited questing fingers, the trim waist and narrow hips and the same way of looking up at Kaidan wide-eyed with a degree of lust that was contagious: it was impossible to be confronted with that look and _not_ want to touch him.

He'd never wanted anyone as much as he'd wanted Shepard, never wanted to know someone so completely inside and out.

The glowing scars patterned him all the way down, faint grooves warm to the touch: Kaidan ran his fingers along them from shoulderblade to nipple to navel and further down, over the deep groove above the hipbone and finally to the base of Shepard's cock. Shepard caught his breath as Kaidan's fingers ghosted along the length of him, and moaned when Kaidan took them away again and whispered "Uh-huh. Not yet."

More kisses, deep and urgent, with Shepard pressed desperately against him and Shepard's hands strong and firm at the small of his back. More waiting, as Kaidan explored his body for the first time all over again, and discovered with glee that all the old soft spots and hot buttons were still there. The way Shepard loved to be underneath Kaidan kneeling over him, pinning his wrists over his head, and the hardness of his cock against Kaidan's thighs as Kaidan held him down. The pulse of the vein in his throat as Kaidan kissed his way up under Shepard's chin, knowing exactly how high up he could leave the love bites before they'd show above the neck-ring of the helmet.

(He'd left a few one time, and Shepard had got the third degree from their publicist, then the costuming team, and caused a miniature viral sensation and a dozen breathless headlines after a TV camera caught him from the right angle.)

The whimper when Kaidan told him to hold still, and the strangled, humming tension in every line of his body when Kaidan bent to take Shepard's cock all the way to the back of his mouth, and bring him ruthlessly to the edge before moving up to kiss him on the cheek again.

He let Shepard catch his breath while he scrabbled in his backpack for lube and condoms, and remembered too late that his travel stash was the free ones they'd given him when the advertising campaign got the green light. Blue packets with the white stripe, Sentinel-branded. _Making the world a safer place._ Who'd approved that?

Spectre had been hard-edged, bloody-minded, with nerves of steel: the comics and cartoons fictionalising their exploits had leaned hard on that for the interrogation scenes. Spectre was the one you couldn't faze, who always had a wisecrack left over, who told four-star generals to get their act together and villains to go to hell,  who never met a problem he couldn't shoot through or shout down.

And it wasn't an act, most of the time; it was only when they were alone like this, with the cameras dark and the world shrunk to the diameter of their arms, where the armour came off.

Kaidan fingered Shepard carefully, leisurely, until he was gasping, and then pushed him down into the bed and fucked him hard, the way he liked it, with Kaidan holding him down and putting his weight into Shepard's hips with every thrust. The solid weight of Shepard's body between his thighs, the soft heat of him, and the way his back arched, body offered up warm and glowing, every time Kaidan took him -

Shepard came hard and shuddering, cum dripping across his stomach, every line of his body seemingly clenching tight at the same time. Kaidan held on fractionally longer, long enough to go down on one elbow and press his face into the curve of Shepard's neck, where the helmet would have sat, and close his eyes.

*

"Come with me," Shepard said again, when he'd surfaced, and they were lying tangled together on top of the covers.

"No," Kaidan said. "I'll do more good with the Alliance. You pull from that side, I'll push from this."

Orange streetlight slanted in through the blinds.

"Silver lining," Shepard said after a while. "You always wanted a nemesis."

"Press Office made that up," Kaidan said sleepily into his shoulder.

"It'll be good for your image. My numbers went through the roof after Sovereign turned up." Shepard ran his hand over Kaidan's hair. "I'd be honoured to be your main villain."

Kaidan snorted. "And they say romance is dead."

*

 _RISE OF RENEGADE,_ said the headlines the next month, and _THE CLAWS OF CERBERUS,_ and the gossip-machine hummed along, and journalists asked what Spectre would have made of the New Alien Threat, and how Sentinel felt about having a new nemesis, and if the Alliance knew the identity of the white-armoured antihero; and Kaidan smiled and nodded and claimed not to have any idea at all.


End file.
